ICARP Grant Programs Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program

Rising temperatures put some people at higher risk than others. Vulnerable populations including aging populations, children, and those with certain health conditions are at higher risk of heat related illness. When vulnerable populations face health inequities due to factors such as poverty, linguistic isolation, the cost of cooling, and the legacy of racist redlining policies, this puts them at disproportionately high risk of heat-related illness and death.

Extreme heat interventions such as providing shade, promoting evaporative cooling, and offering public education reduce the harm of extreme heat on our communities. Historically, local, regional, and tribal governments have lacked the information and financial resources needed to plan and implement comprehensive extreme heat interventions. This has kept California’s diverse communities from being able to address the harms of extreme heat specific to each community.

ICARP’s Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program coordinates the state’s comprehensive response to this climate impact and builds capacity for heat action planning –- creating frameworks to reduce the risks of extreme heat events and the Urban Heat Island effect – and project implementation in the most heat-burdened communities by providing funding and technical support. The Program also drives the state’s work to implement California’s Extreme Heat Action Plan,- a comprehensive, coordinated effort across State agencies to advance equity, including reducing the economic and health disparities exacerbated by extreme heat.

The Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program will invest in local, regional, and tribal efforts to reduce the impacts of extreme heat. This program will fund projects such as:

• creating extreme heat action plans
• providing mechanical or natural shade
• increasing building and surface reflectance
• providing passive or low-energy cooling strategies
• promoting evaporative cooling

Key Priorities of ICARP’s Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program:

• Explicitly and meaningfully prioritize equity by providing technical support and establishing an inclusive funding program that minimizes barriers, particularly in the most heat vulnerable communities, and ensures that awardees represent a wide range of geographic, economic, and population diversity.
• Coordinate the state’s efforts to address extreme heat and the urban heat island effect.
• Provide financial and technical assistance to eligible tribal, local, and regional entities to support their efforts to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat and the urban heat island effect.
• Address historic underinvestment by embedding equity into the planning and implementation process including by encouraging communities to equitably plan for extreme heat events by centering the needs of the community members most vulnerable to extreme heat.
• Build statewide capacity to equitably plan and implement heat intervention strategies by supporting peer-to-peer learning, communities of practice, information sharing, and publishing replicable case studies on the State Adaptation Clearinghouse.